The New Ambition

More women are rethinking traditional perks like prestige and a hefty paycheck to pursue a career that fuels their passion. Find out why now is the time to leave the relentless grind behind for a life you love.

When Adrienne Osborn’s managers called her into a conference room on a sunny day in April 2006, she knew the news couldn’t be good. “I’d been working 90-hour weeks, trying to rescue a project that was tanking,” the software engineer recalls. “Truthfully, I was so fried that when they told me my job was over, the only emotion I could muster was relief.”

There’s another reason Osborn, 37, wasn’t crushed to give up her six-figure salary. For years, she’d been feeling as if she should be doing something else. “It sounds silly, but I knew I was supposed to fulfill a mission. Only I didn’t know what that was,” she says. “My ambition was to find out what I was meant to do with my life.”

Osborn is part of a new generation of women who define ambition in terms of ideals rather than occupying the corner office. In a Self.com poll, 65 percent of women say that feeling passionate about their work is most important to them, while only 11 percent say pay is key, and only 2 percent value prestige. Meanwhile, 71 percent wish their work was more emotionally satisfying, and 54 percent say their dream job would be one that makes a difference in the world. “Typically, women are less intent on the trappings of success than on internal rewards,” says Michael F. Steger, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory for the Study of Meaning and Quality of Life at Colorado State University at Fort Collins.

Of course, you could argue that women have always been more apt to seek out meaningful (versus merely lucrative) jobs. After all, until fairly recently, men have overwhelmingly been the bread winners. But even now, when more of us outearn men, there’s a renewed focus on discovering a deeper purpose. In a self study of the causes women care about most, known as the GOOD survey, 66 percent felt they should give back to their community.

“The job market is in flux, which means now is actually a good time to be thinking about how your career meshes with your values,” says Leslie Godwin, author of From Burned Out to Fired Up: A Woman’s Guide to Rekindling the Passion and Meaning in Work and Life (HCI Books). The reality is, there’s no guarantee that your job will exist tomorrow. “So if you reflect on what’s gratifying and have ideas about how to get there, you’ll be more emotionally ready to handle changes when they come,” she says.

One way of doing that is to pursue your passions after hours: According to self’s GOOD survey, 63 percent of women volunteer for philanthropic causes that matter to them. And in the workplace, women are creatively redefining their roles, asking for flexible hours and carving out their ideal job description, even if it doesn’t quite match the title on their business card. We talked to three who ditched conventional definitions of success and ended up exhilarated. Because isn’t that what all of us ultimately deserve?

“I followed my gut.”

Like many young women, Holly Frew stumbled into her first job after college somewhat randomly. “I studied public relations and marketing but ended up in sales because that’s what my friends were doing,” says Frew, now 30, who lives in Atlanta. Eventually, she began selling medical devices, which garnered her $50,000 a year and a bonus, plus perks like a cell phone. “The money was great, but the work wasn’t challenging,” she says. Frew was also uneasy with the corporate culture: “In sales, it’s all about the money. After a while, that felt pretty empty to me.”

When a friend mentioned a trip she’d heard about at church?10 days in AIDS-racked Swaziland, Africa, to plant vegetables in rural areas?Frew signed up. That was in 2005. “It changed my life,” she says. “I went to one house where a 12-year-old was the mom to a dozen orphans, because their parents had died of AIDS. It was deeply moving.”

When Frew got back to the States, she fell into a mini-funk. “Climbing the corporate ladder seemed so pointless after what I’d seen,” she says. So when she heard about another yearlong program in Swaziland, she seriously considered applying. “At first, I was scared to leave my job,” she says. “Then I thought, I’m 26, I’m single, I have some money saved and I don’t have a mortgage. If there’s a time to do this, it’s now.” So she quit and, three months later, traveled back to Swaziland for a longer-term project, doing AIDS education in high schools.

Frew had to raise nearly $10,000 for her living expenses and received little else in the way of compensation. Yet when she got home, she didn’t consider going back into sales, even though her bank account was down to only a few thousand dollars. Instead, she took jobs as a barista and a nanny while researching careers in international medical relief. She also did freelance copywriting and marketing work, but the assignments didn’t earn her quite enough to make a go of it. “I knew I needed something full-time.”

When she saw a listing for a PR and marketing spot, she applied. The position turned out to be at MedShare, a firm that collects surplus medical supplies and redistributes them to developing countries. “It was just what I was looking for,” Frew says.

Now, two years later, she enthuses, “I love it. I make about $10,000 less than I did in sales, but I feel lucky to get paid for a job I feel good about. And I wouldn’t have found it if I’d done the safe thing and stayed where I was.”

“I made my hobby pay off.”

After Adrienne Osborn was laid off from her software firm, she craved two things: rest and a change of scenery. Because of her generous severance package, she was able to spend four months visiting friends in Spain and hiking around the hills of her Boulder, Colorado, home. It was on one of those hikes that she asked herself the classic career question: What would I most want to do if money were no object? Her mind quickly wandered to her childhood dream of becoming a singer, especially because she’d recently started singing backup in a local band for fun. “I’d performed in high school and college but never considered making a career of it. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I could try to be a singer for real.”

A few months later, Osborn received her first-ever payment for a gig. “It was only $40, but it was the most precious $40 I’d ever earned. It felt amazing that someone would pay me to sing!” There was also the rush she got from being onstage: “I’d see people dancing and feel an electric connection?like, wow, we’re all sharing this moment.”

Despite now earning only about a fifth of what she did in software, Osborn says, “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing.” Besides singing in bars and clubs around Boulder, she also teaches singing three days a week to pay the bills?and finds it surprisingly satisfying. “I recently got an email from a student who’d done really well in a karaoke night, and it was so rewarding, because I realized I was helping someone else achieve her dream, too.”

Although she and her husband have had to scale back?they rarely eat out anymore?she’s happy with the trade-off for now, and so, thankfully, is he. “He is totally behind me and is happy that I’m happy,” she says. “My life feels so much richer than before. I have more time, I am more relaxed and, when I’m working, I’m really in it?heart, mind and soul.”

“I did something I thought I’d never do.”

Ja
net Maddern, 37, planned on having kids one day, “but I’ve always been ambitious. Being a mom wasn’t the only thing I wanted,” she says. As a systems analyst for a big corporation, she savored the intellectual challenges of the job. “I was known as a problem solver, and that felt really good to me,” says Maddern, who lives in Hendersonville, Tennessee. “Plus, I loved the freedom, sense of self-sufficiency and security my salary gave me?being able to buy nice things, pay my own rent and travel.”

So she was as surprised as anyone when, after her son was born five years ago, she felt a strong urge to stay home. “It was a struggle for me to care about work,” she says. She and her husband pored over their budget and figured that if they reduced their spending, they could afford to have her cut down to only three days a week. “I worried that staying home would make me less interesting, but my heart wasn’t in the job anymore.”

When her daughter arrived in 2006, she “just knew” she had to be home full-time, regardless of the sacrifice. “Nothing was as important to me as being with my kids,” Maddern says. She and her husband had to institute some fairly drastic lifestyle shifts, like moving to a smaller home and curtailing expenses even further. “We had to redefine our wants versus our needs,” she says. “That was tough to do, but whenever I got frustrated, I’d look at my children. Once I held my babies, my definition of fulfillment changed drastically.” And although she admits that having things like a big house and fancy furniture would be nice, “truthfully, my kids and family are what really matter to me now.”